


Going Native

by sexysadie



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Angst, Blood and Gore, Canonical Character Death, Daddy Issues, Dead People, Detox, Drug Addiction, Dysfunctional Family, Family Dynamics, Gen, Ghosts, Hurt No Comfort, Pre-Canon, Substance Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-11-18 04:10:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18112994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sexysadie/pseuds/sexysadie
Summary: Klaus is broke. Drugs are expensive. Of course, his siblings are (not) more than happy to help out, and feelings come out along the way.





	Going Native

**Author's Note:**

> (I'm dropping a warning for a little bit of gore at around the midpoint of this fic, and also a general one for the symptoms of detox.)
> 
> Allison never showed up in this, but I guess that's the way it goes? I like to think that she's having a nice time being a movie star. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this, the angsty little thing that it is. 
> 
> Title comes from the [song](https://youtu.be/t2P-gOY2H50) by Summer Salt. I thought it was fitting :-)

Klaus buys a coffee in Starbucks. It’s a simple process, and probably shouldn’t cause the sour pang of defeat he feels as he hands the $2.95 (in exact change) to the barista, but somehow that’s exactly what it is – a total defeat. The barista smiles vacantly at him as the sound system starts burbling some chirpy Simon and Garfunkel song, and Klaus feels the faint pressure of the next impatient customer at his back before his fingers have even touched the paper of the receipt. A flash of uncharacteristic irritation spiders through his shoulders. He reminds himself that he knows how to crush someone’s windpipe. He wonders idly if Mr. Pushy would be able to drink his grande soy caramel latte with his trachea caved in.

“You’re holding up the line,” says Ben, sounding amused, and Klaus feels the thought dissolve as quickly as it had come. He shuffles forward to where Ben is standing, arms crossed like an exasperated parent. “Quit acting cranky.”

“It’s the sweating, man. I’m gonna have to change my clothes or people are gonna start calling the cops on me.” He plucks at the front of his thin t-shirt for effect, the damp material peeling away in a decidedly unpleasant manner. The woman in front of him gives him a worried, furtive glance over her shoulder and Klaus pulls a face at the back of her head. “Say, you couldn’t pop to the ghost bank and get me some ghost money, could you, sport? Help an old friend out?”

Ben just watches him silently from underneath slightly raised eyebrows.

“God, I forgot what a judgemental bitch you are,” Klaus grumbles. “That’s you. A judgemental ghost bitch who won’t get his poor, sad brother some crisp ghost dollar for dope.”

“Stop sulking or you won’t enjoy your coffee,” says Ben curtly. “It took two hours of dumpster diving to find the money for it. That’s precious time.”

And that’s the kicker, see. That’s the defeat, the fact that Klaus is standing in line for a coffee probably full of FDA-banned chemicals and, like, baby powder, or whatever it is Starbucks puts in their drinks nowadays, having just paid with the loose quarters that fall out of people’s pockets on the street. And like the world’s most withered, depressing cherry on top of the shitstorm that is today, he’s about to go and get on his knees to beg his dear family for drugs money because dammit, poker’s harder than he remembered. What a life.

Klaus gives Ben what he hopes is his most murderous glare. “It was either that or robbing banks. Personally, I don’t want one of my siblings to come kick my ass first thing on a Wednesday morning.”

“I mean, they’d _have_ to listen to you that way.” Ben has a point, and Klaus rewards him with an appreciative nod. “But don’t get any ideas.”

“It’s probably best to keep relationships non-homicidal,” Klaus agrees pensively.

Apparently close to reaching hysteria, the woman in front grabs her cup from the barista’s hand and skitters off like a startled horse, heels clicking fervently as she gives Klaus the kind of backwards stare reserved only for the _truly_ batshit. “That’s right,” Klaus calls after her gleefully, “I see dead people!”

“You’re such a child,” Ben scolds, but he’s smiling reluctantly, which cheers Klaus up ever so slightly. “One day someone’ll call the cops and you’ll get sectioned.”

“Been there, done that, got the hospital gown.” Klaus wipes at his nose with his sleeve, which is probably incredibly repulsive but altogether necessary if he wants to save the underpaid people who work here from cleaning up his snot from the floor. He’d forgotten how much ass detox actually sucks. The waxy yellow lighting is beginning to hurt his head, amplified by the fact that some genius has decided to hang lightbulbs in mason jars from the ceiling at the exact same level as his face. They were presumably aiming for quirky and rustic, but instead it’s like someone’s shining a torch directly into his eyes.

“Latte for Klaus,” says the kid behind the counter, holding the cup out at arm’s length like Klaus is a feral dog at the end of a chain, unpredictable and ready to chew someone’s arm off. After Klaus takes it, she has the gall – the fucking _audacity_ – to look pointedly at the tip jar and then back at him, as if the person she’s looking at doesn’t look like he’d just climbed out of a Dickens novel. They maintain a strange, tense eye contact for a second, before Klaus caves and drops his last dime in the jar with a stiff half-smile. The clink of coins makes his eye twitch. _God bless you, please, Mrs. Robinson,_ coos the sound system, _Heaven holds a place for those who pray._ Sanctimonious assholes.

“Fuck that,” he breathes as they exit onto the street, Ben strolling effortlessly through the glass pane next to the door. It’s not like he could buy anything for a dime, anyway. Maybe some dealer would let him sniff an unlit joint from a few feet away. “Is everyone so aggressive, or is it just my presence that alights a primal mistrust in people?”

“Definitely the last one,” replies Ben sagely.

Luckily, it looks like it’s going to be a mild day. It had frosted the night before, so that in the areas of shade a sparkling sheen is still clinging, but in the sky the sun is just cresting over the tops of buildings, still coloured that pleasant morning shade of bright butter-yellow. It’s warm enough that the air doesn’t hurt Klaus’ chest when he breathes in, but cool enough that the breeze is delightfully cold against his damp skin as he walks. For a second, he watches the light creeping up the sidewalk, illuminating the little crystals of ice there so that they twinkle like cat eyes, feeling something like contentment. Then he takes a mouthful of coffee and it’s all _ruined_ , because Christ on a bicycle, that’s _bad_ coffee.

Klaus swallows it down, mouth set in a grim line, like the little trooper he is. This is the hardest he’s ever had to work for coffee and he’s damned if it’s going to go to waste. Ben gives him an inquisitive look, as if waiting for instructions, and Klaus claps his hands together briskly. “Operation beg siblings for money, score drugs and get utterly fucked is go.”

-

The first stop is Vanya’s. A testament to her town-mousy temperament, she still lives in the city, albeit a twenty-minute cab ride away from the Academy in a small, unambitious apartment near the train station. Klaus knows this because he followed her there once, anticipating the sort of emergency he’s facing now, which isn’t actually as creepy as it sounds because the intention was totally noble. While this location is better than, say, the top of Macchu Picchu, it still requires a solid hour’s walking, which is practically the Boston marathon in Klaus’ state.

Half an hour in, he seriously considers calling it a day, going to a club and licking the toilet lids in the hope of the smallest grain of coke. Just for something. _Anything._ The sweating has given way to a splitting headache, leaving the sounds of the city – the hissing of bus brakes, birds squawking, the clatter and hum of construction sites – ringing in his ears. “Look. That one over there’s got a French name. Maybe it’ll be classy.”

“You’ll get face gonorrhoea,” says Ben. “Your teeth will fall out.”

“They’ll get me dentures,” replies Klaus determinedly. “And then I’ll sell them for more coke.”

“Or, you could preserve whatever dregs of dignity you have left and… not do that.”

“I _need_ it.”

“ _Face_ gonorrhoea.”

Klaus sniffs miserably. “I bet they don’t even have a cure for that.”

“No.” Ben shakes his head solemnly. “No, they don’t.”

They make it eventually. Klaus feels strung out, like a shirt that’s been through the washing machine on the highest setting and then pegged up to dry on the line. His vision’s going wrong every now and again, like everything’s suddenly rushing closer towards him and then retreating back again. They stand in front of Vanya’s olive-green front door, and Ben gestures at his forehead to prompt Klaus to wipe away the layer of sweat that’s collected there.

“Gotta look presentable when you’re asking your estranged sister for drug money,” says Klaus with the wisdom of a century-old seer. Admittedly, it’s been a couple of years since he’s seen any of his brothers or sisters – though he keeps an eye on the news for them, the sentimental loser that he is – but the last time they were all in a room together, it had been clear that they’d all finally outgrown each other. When it came to wheedling money out of them, Vanya seemed like a safe bet and the obvious first choice. She wasn’t going to try and stick him like a pig like Diego; she wouldn’t look at him as if he were a nasty stain in an expensive shirt like Allison, and he couldn’t expect from her the lecture that he’d get from Luther. That was the nice thing about ordinary Vanya. She reacted like an ordinary person.

Still, nothing in Klaus’ life has ever been normal. Wiping his damp hair from his forehead, he knocks on the door.

Footsteps precede Vanya, and Klaus imagines her little feet (size three! Can you believe it?) tapping against the wooden floors in that hurried, nervous, baby-deer gait she’d adopted when she was very young. You could always tell who was around in the halls at the Academy. Their father, for example, was easy to recognise; his footsteps were even and calculated, soft, but deliberate enough to announce his presence. Klaus suddenly feels vividly as though he were back there, lying in bed, the sounds of the house settling loud in the dark silence. The moonlight fell across his bed in a perfect rectangle of brilliant white, dust particles dancing in the beam. Mom’s feminine, clicked-heel footsteps disappeared down the corridor, and a fox shrieked somewhere far away.

There was a face at the foot of his bed. Its mouth was open in a wide, dark scream. Its eyes were so bottomless Klaus felt he would fall into them and never get out.

_Klaus. Help me, Klaus. Oh God, I want to go home. Klaus, Klaus, I don’t want to be dead. Klaus-_

“Klaus?”

“That’s me,” says Klaus, wrenched back to the present unkindly. The words feel like cotton wool in his mouth. Vanya stands in front of him, looking carefully blank, not angry or upset, but not exactly pleased to see him, either. He aims for casual, leaning against the doorframe and fixing his sister with a charming grin, though it probably comes out as pained, slightly maniacal grimace. “How’ve you been, sis? How’s the, uh,” he mimes playing that stringed instrument she’d slogged away at each evening, “violin?”

Vanya looks slightly taken aback. Klaus wonders if there’s something on his face. “Oh. Um. Good. I’m good. The violin’s good.”

“Good,” beams Klaus, and sweeps into Vanya’s little living room, sprawling himself out on a chair as if he owns it. _Take control, Klaus,_ he reminds himself. _You run the show._ “Nice place you’ve got here. Very… cosy.”

“You don’t have to pretend,” Vanya says a little spikily. She shuts the door quietly and turns on her heels to face him, arms wrapped around herself, sweater sleeves pulled up over her hands. Like an overgrown child, small and unsure and insular, nervous and unfamiliar in her own apartment. The décor is sparse and safe and the furniture is unremarkable, everything shaded in some washed-out brown, grey or burgundy. There are the smallest touches of personality scattered around the room – a stack of sheet music and a stand for them by the window, a snow-globe on the mantelpiece that cheerfully proclaims _Welcome to Central Park Zoo!_ and a threadbare turquoise throw discarded over the back of the couch – but other than that, it looks dull and empty. Almost as if Vanya’s real stuff is all packed up in boxes somewhere and she’s just waiting for an excuse to move out.

“Do you want a drink?” Vanya asks hesitantly, shuffling her feet. “Coffee, tea…” She pauses and lets her eyes slowly travel down Klaus’ body. “Beer?”

“You have beer?” The word elicits some sort of Pavloivan response in Klaus, lighting up all the neurons in his shrivelled junkie brain like a fucking Christmas tree. He hears Ben’s exasperated sigh from somewhere behind him and it cuts through him like a knife. “Shut _up_ , asshole.”

Vanya whips around where she’s stood in the kitchen-diner with reflexive swiftness that echoes the woman in the coffee shop earlier. “What?” She looks so vulnerable and unguarded, face drooping like a kicked puppy, that it almost shocks Klaus back to sobriety.

“No!” he says quickly, scrambling to remove that awful expression from her face. “Not you. It’s- well, you know. Ben. My spooky powers.”

Vanya sort of half-nods uncertainly, not removing her eyes from Klaus’ face. He tries to look sincere, which is something that he hasn’t been since 2001, and probably ends up looking more deranged than he did earlier. “He says hi, by the way.”

“Oh.” She turns and stutters back to life, opening the fridge and reaching to take out a familiar red-labelled bottle. Klaus’ mouth has started to water unconsciously, and he shuts it firmly so he doesn’t start dribbling like a mental patient. He doesn’t need to give Vanya any more reasons to suspect him of being totally and irreversibly fucked up in the head (even though he probably is). “Tell him I said hi back.”

“He can hear you.” Klaus points to where Ben is perched on a cabinet.

Vanya smiles a little at the vague spot near Klaus’ shoulder. It must be a little weird for her, knowing that her definitely-dead brother is somehow still in the room with her but that she’ll never be able to interact with him. “Hi, Ben.”

The three (two) of them fall quiet for a beat. The only sounds are the rumbling traffic outside and the clink and hiss of Vanya opening bottles. They’d never had that much to do with each other as children, and when they’d been assigned to the same training the atmosphere had been much the same as it is now – not hostile, but echoing uncomfortably with unsaid words all the same. They’d both been black sheep to some degree, but had dealt with the alienation in different ways, and it was painfully obvious each time they had interacted that a crevice that was widening between them. While Klaus had decided at a very young age to lean into his weirdness, to become the loudest presence in the room, Vanya had seemed to slowly fade away, like a picture left out under the bright sun, until one day she’d just been swept off by the wind.

Vanya gives him another one of those lopsided smiles as she hands him his bottle, held out like an olive branch. Klaus drinks it like he’s never even seen water in his life.

“You were thirsty,” says Vanya, sounding a little surprised, as she perches daintily on the edge of the other couch to face him. Klaus wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand. Fuck it, they’re family and he can behave how he likes. Regarding him cautiously, Vanya crosses one leg over the other and leans forward. Her eyebrows are drawn, and Klaus can hear the uncomfortable words she wants to say rattling around the room. _Why are you here? Why are you pretending that we are just regular siblings having a regular, friendly meeting?_

“Is something the matter?” she decides on eventually, sounding the words out carefully as if Klaus might not understand them.

“There are many things the matter with me,” he begins dramatically, and as if to prove his point his head glows with a particularly sharp stab of pain, sending nausea creeping slickly up his throat. God fucking dammit. He is not going to ruin his sister’s apartment by puking his guts up everywhere. “For one, I’m too handsome for my own good, and modelling agencies won’t stop hounding me down the street. I’m also cursed with a formidable intellect. And don’t even get me started on the issue I have with tight jeans, you’d think that clothes companies would allow for a little more room down there, you know, for the more well-endowed folks-”

“Klaus,” Vanya interrupts, but she looks faintly amused. “Why are you really here?”

“Well,” says Klaus, pausing in his theatrical hip-rolling, and suddenly feels more pathetic than he ever has in his life. It’s like he can feel Ben’s eyes drilling holes between his shoulder blades, the points of contact like little judgemental knives in his skin, deflating him like a balloon. Vanya looks at him expectantly and Klaus wipes a jittery hand down his face. “Well,” he repeats, laughing weakly. “That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?”

Another beat of that awkward quiet. Klaus’ knee has started to jump up and down. “I need money.”

Somehow saying the words forces Klaus to comprehend the gravity of the situation. He feels like a freak and a selfish fuck, sat in his sister’s shabby little apartment asking for the money that she earned simply by hunkering down and working hard. Vanya is still watching him silently, expression toeing the fragile line between pity and disgust, like you might look at a spider when you’re deciding whether to carry it outside or murder it with a shoe.

“Klaus, I-” she starts. Stops. “Is- is that all you’re here for?”

“Yeah,” says Klaus miserably.

Vanya’s mouth twists into this hurt, humiliated little frown. “I can’t give it to you. I have to pay rent on Friday.”

“It’s fine,” says Klaus, standing abruptly, feeling flustered as though he’s being crowded by a crush of warm bodies. It all seems too much – too hot, too loud, too big, a dark, insurmountable peak rising above him on the horizon, a mountain of his own creation. “It was- it was stupid, I didn’t-”

“Have you asked anyone else?”

“No, I came to you first, sis-”

“Because I’m the soft touch, right?” says Vanya, and that defeated, drooping look is back. God, she always was good at looking like the world took a shit on her doorstep every morning. Klaus groans, pushes a hand through the tangled mess of his hair, and leaves swiftly through the door without even finishing his beer. Fuck family. Fuck this. It’s too goddamn early.

-

Klaus makes it three blocks in the direction of Diego’s place before he’s crouched in an alley watching $2.95 worth of coffee, half a bottle of Bud and last night’s burrito hit the cold, unforgiving concrete unceremoniously.

“What did I ever do to deserve this?” he asks the coffee-beer-burrito mixture forlornly, head between his knees. “Is this karma? Was I a professional kitten killer in a past life?”

“No, you’re just a massive idiot in this one,” Ben retorts from behind Klaus, picking at his nails and sounding bored.

While the weather had been mild and seasonable earlier, it’s now given way to an uncomfortably hot spring day. The sun beats down unkindly on the back of Klaus’ neck and the sickly smell of warm, wet tarmac invades his mouth and nose, mingling with the aura of vomit and damp that seems to cling to him permanently nowadays. A thin line of sweat makes its way down the side of his face, pooling in the hollow where his throat meets his collarbone. For a minute or two, all Klaus can do is crouch there, shaking with the effort of just breathing, stock still as not to agitate the rhythmic pounding in his temples, and _wish_ for a hit. At least when you’re high you don’t realise how low you’ve gotten.

“I can’t do this,” he says, more to himself that Ben. The words feel like they’ve been scooped from him with a spoon, leaving a hollow pit in his stomach.

At his shoulder there’s a strange, watery feeling that Klaus identifies as some part of Ben’s weird ghost body passing by his own. Though he’s not entirely corporeal, Ben still has something of a presence, which is why Klaus can feel him crouched close behind him, familiar and comforting. When he leans back into him, he can feel a cool, ethereal point of contact in the small of his back, and he drags his vision up to face the scummy brick wall in front of his face. He pulls a deep, cold breath of air into his lungs. “My head hurts like a motherfucker. Put your hand through it. Give it a stir.”

“No,” says Ben after a second of hesitation, “that would be… weird.”

Klaus considers it for a moment. “It would, probably, yes.”

“I have boundaries, you know.”

“Yeah, alright, Mother Teresa. You can keep your prudey little ghost hands to yourself.”

Klaus stands slowly, joints popping, before turning to blink into the bright sun. A woman walking past the alley grabs her daughter’s hand a little tighter and scurries out of sight. An odd sense of pride stirs somewhere in Klaus, much like the feeling he’d gotten when he’d worn Allison’s pleated skirt and knee-highs to breakfast for the first time and his father had been so incensed he’d had to leave the room.

“I need you to let me do this by myself,” he says, turning to look at Ben, who nods wordlessly. “Diego already thinks I’m a nutjob. I need him to see me as… less of a nutjob.”

“Got it.” Ben tilts his head and fixes Klaus with a small, encouraging smile. Then, slowly, as if the edges of him are slowly dissolving, he fades from view, his cool aura dissipating into the morning air as easily as water vapour being carried off by the wind. Klaus feels a soft, barely tangible snapping sensation that he identifies as the connection between them severing.

For a second, he stands there in the alley, feeling totally and utterly lonely. He reaches for a cigarette in his pocket, realises that he doesn’t have any and seethes for a second, then sets off at a hesitant pace towards his brother’s apartment.

Diego’s place is even smaller than Vanya’s and a short walk further out of town. Klaus suspects that the years of living in that cavernous house fucked with their spatial awareness, so that their monkey brains have decided that they need the security of somewhere cramped and cluttered. No room to hide, and no effort required to fill any yawning empty spaces like those in the Academy.

The squat, grey apartment block requires visitors to be buzzed in, so Klaus locates his brother’s name – simply ‘Diego’, no last name, the paranoid bastard – and presses the little button next to it dutifully. The button is as bright and shiny as new, unlike the others, which are scuffed and dull with use.

There are a few seconds of nothing, and then Diego’s stupid macho-man voice crackles over the intercom. “Hello?”

Bingo. Klaus has never heard a sweeter sound in his life. Betting on Diego even being home was a gamble, but hey, no one’s ever got anywhere by not trying. Except for most of the people who run the country. “Hello, it’s housekeeping! We were wondering if you wanted your underwear ironed-”

“Is this… Klaus, is that you?”

“No, it’s housekeeping.” Klaus briefly envisions the _are you serious_ sort of glance that Ben would be aiming at him. “It’s just that we’ve noticed that there’s these real _stubborn_ wrinkles in them, and we want to keep you looking smart.”

Over the intercom, Klaus hears Diego sigh long-sufferingly. “What do you want.” It isn’t phrased like a question.

“What I want, darling brother, is to see your sweet face again. I’m just not getting the emotional fulfilment I need from paparazzi photos anymore.”

“I’m being serious, Klaus,” growls Diego, and Klaus can’t help his momentous, impatient eye-roll. The two of them had always shared a tentative sort of bond; they were close as young children but had drifted apart as they had grown into their teenage years and the differences between them had become more apparent. Although he’d deny it to his grave, Diego’s power had given him a similar complex to the one Luther had nursed since childhood – a compulsion to serve and protect and, most importantly, to impress, though it was Mom that Diego licked the heels of, rather than their father. Though also a defector, it was clear that their father had instilled in him a deep, immovable sense of superiority, and as a result his hubris had always clashed with Klaus’ apathy. It was stupid of Klaus to assume he’d just comply with him. That would be too fucking easy.

“Fine,” Klaus huffs, feeling ill and put-upon. “I need to ask you for something. I’m not doing it here, though. I feel like a Jehovah’s witness.”

There’s another sigh – has Diego contracted asthma since Klaus last saw him? – and then a beep as the door to the building unlocks. “ _Thank_ you,” Klaus says irritably to nobody. “Asshole.”

The set of stairs leading to the apartment genuinely almost puts Klaus in the early grave that he’s sure awaits him. By the time he’s reached the top the edges of his vision dance with sparks that threaten to engulf it entirely and his head feels as though someone’s filled his sinuses with helium. He braces himself against the banister for a couple of seconds, breathing the stale, dusty air in and out carefully, and regrets not asking Vanya for some aspirin. Perhaps Diego will have some. Or not, because he probably doesn’t believe in pain relief.

Diego is waiting for him halfway down the corridor, looking decidedly out of place in his black leather ensemble against the muted red carpet and dishwater-grey walls. His arms are folded across his chest and his stance is wide, and if Klaus didn’t feel so shockingly bad he might be pissed at the fact that Diego seems to be treating him like an enemy.

Klaus straightens up and plasters a smile to his face in an attempt to look a little more human. “Long time, no see,” he says, and his voice echoes down the hall.

Shifting his weight, Diego doesn’t seem inclined to, say, invite his obviously worse-for-wear brother into his apartment for tea and a catch-up. Instead, he raises a questioning eyebrow – a speciality of his – and stares Klaus down expectantly. “What is it that you wanted to ask me?”

“First of all, I want to know why it smells of updog in here.”

Diego frowns. “The fuck is updog?”

Ah, just like old times. Klaus pauses for dramatic effect before delivering a truly breath-taking _coup de grâce_. “Nothing much, what about you?”

Comprehension dawns like a sunrise on Diego’s face, and then he turns abruptly on his heel and begins to stride back towards his apartment. “Aw, come on, man, I was just breaking the ice,” Klaus protests, scurrying down the corridor, desperate not to let this chance slip through his fingers. Sometimes he just can’t help himself. “Come on, take a joke, Diego. Diego!”

Diego pauses with his hand on the knob, the door cracked half open, and fixes Klaus with a truly withering look over his shoulder. Clearly, over the last few years he has been working on perfecting the grizzled, brooding look usually reserved for disgraced ex-police officers who sit alone in shadowy corners of backcountry bars, nursing whiskeys and grudgingly willing to tell curious travellers the story of how they got their eyepatch. (Klaus is a little taken aback by the metaphor. Maybe he’s been watching too much daytime TV). Anyway, that’s all bullshit because they’re only twenty-three and as much as Klaus is sure Diego would like to pretend, having daddy issues and completing a few months at a police academy just doesn’t warrant that sort of vibe. He needs a few wrinkles before it’ll even start to work for him.

“Look, I just need a teeny-tiny moment of your time.” Diego’s face doesn’t soften. _What did I ever do to you?_ Klaus thinks with a vivid pang of self-pity and is almost overcome by the childish urge to stamp his foot and shout at the injustice of it all. “Why don’t you let me in, and we can have a chat, catch up on things, you know, all the stuff we haven’t done in a while-”

“You made it pretty clear the last time you saw us that you didn’t ever want to see us again,” Diego interrupts flatly. Klaus opens his mouth to retort, but unfortunately Diego has a fair point, so he shuts it again contritely. While it was a little dramatic, his departure from the Academy couldn’t have come as a shock to anyone. Luther was the exception – he seemed to be totally floored each time it happened, as if he couldn’t understand why anybody wouldn’t want to spend their life frittering time away in a house full of people who couldn’t stand the sight of each other.

Still, Diego is perceptive enough to realise that, as nasty as the shit that had come out of Klaus’ mouth on the evening that he’d left was, most of it was just the empty, bitter gut-spilling of a teenager who’d felt lonely and wronged. They’d been seventeen at the time, and most seventeen-year-olds don’t have a single clue about how to deal with feelings, let alone those as dysfunctional as them. Klaus remembers the hot, self-righteous rage that had sung in his blood – the raw, bloody wound of Ben’s death was still fresh and open, and his terrified screaming had seemed to play on a constant loop in his head for the weeks afterwards. When he’d stepped out of the door into the warm summer’s night, he’d looked back at the stupid umbrella symbol on the doors – the same one etched forever into the skin of his forearm – and told himself he’d never, ever even think about that place again.

So much for that.

“I know I acted like a bitch,” concedes Klaus finally. “I am a bitch by nature. I don’t think I can do anything about it.”

Diego turns to face Klaus, firmly planting his feet shoulder width apart in the grimy red carpet. Klaus can’t help but notice that he’s started to grow a beard, which does nothing but make him look like someone trying to seem older than they are. “You want money, don’t you?”

The statement catches Klaus off-guard; he’s knocked back a step, as if Diego had physically hit him with it. Bitterly he wonders when he became so predictable. “When did I ever say anything about money?” he protests weakly, but even to him the words sound brittle and weak, like spun sugar.

Diego scoffs unkindly. “I’m not stupid, Klaus. You look terrible. I know what junkies in need of a hit look like. I deal with them every day of my goddamn life.”

“But I’m a special junkie. I’m your brother, in case you’d forgotten.” Klaus lets the unexpected sting of Diego’s words fuel the heat in his voice, like wood on an already steady-burning bonfire.

“So, I’m supposed to give you the money, so you can go out, shoot up and put yourself in the hospital?”

“Yes,” says Klaus bluntly, deciding that he might as well drop all pretences in the face of Diego’s unprecedented hard-headedness. “Yes, so I don’t have to contract face gonorrhoea because I licked coke off of a nightclub toilet.”

“What?” Diego shakes his head in exasperation, clearly finished with the conversation, but Klaus is abruptly more focused on the spot over his brother’s shoulder.

From behind the door, a young woman is emerging from the darkness of the apartment, her face pale as snow against its chipped black gloss paint. Her movements are slow and hesitant, and her eyes are turned to the floor. Her hand curls around the edge of the door and one slim, bare leg appears, foot clad in a sparkling gold stiletto heel. Jewellery twinkles at her delicate throat. From what Klaus can see of her face, it is strikingly beautiful, fine-boned and framed by soft black waves.

Klaus watches her with a strange, unfamiliar sense of unreality, almost as if someone has dimmed the lights and turned the speed down on life. Something isn’t right about this. A forgotten piece of information about low blood sugar wanders through his head. “Who’s the chick?” he asks Diego, who follows Klaus’ stare over his shoulder.

“There’s no chick,” he says after a second of bemused silence, turning back to meet Klaus’ eyes. The girl’s head, however, snaps up like a rabbit caught in the headlights, eyes frantic and searching, and reaches out a grabbing, claw-like hand. Something primal and fearful alights in Klaus’ gut, and he shuffles backwards, keeping his gaze firmly trained on the girl, who is beginning to stumble unsteadily out of the apartment.

Klaus makes a small, frightened noise, and Diego starts forward unsurely. “What? What is it?”

The girl opens her mouth and begins to scream.

“Klaus!” she shrieks as she staggers towards him, her hand still grabbing out in front of her like she’s trying to navigate in the pitch black. Her beautiful face is contorted into an expression of pure, unbridled horror, eyes wide, mouth agape and drooping at the edges. “Klaus! Help me, please, God, I can’t get back, I can’t get back, I can’t get back-”

With a surreal thrill of terror, Klaus notices the mangled mess of her leg, which had previously been hidden behind the door. The pearly white of the splintered bone glints macabrely, bright like the stones around her neck, and blood runs in a scarlet spiral down her calf to the ankle. Dark, mottled bruises creep up her thigh and under the shredded hem of her golden dress. Her arm on the same side has not fared better: her hand is little more than a bloody pulp hanging from the wrist by a few tenuous fibres and tendons, and the skin of her forearm has split like an overfilled sandbag.

Klaus can hear Diego’s voice as if he’s speaking from a few rooms away. At this moment in time, the building could probably catch fire and he’d be none the wiser, held fast under the dark, consuming gaze of the dead girl tottering her way towards him, unable to do anything but stare back.

She takes another step towards Klaus and her broken leg gives way with a wet crunch. She collapses with her good arm outstretched at his feet, pristine red nails scraping the carpet in front of the toes of his shoes. She screams again, a long, awful wail of grief and pain that echoes in the marrow of his bones, and Klaus presses his hands over his ears in the same desperate, childish way he’d done all those years ago, huddled into the corner of his bedroom as the dead clamoured for his attention.

“Please, God. Please help me,” the girl sobs. Her face is upturned, her eyes searching Klaus’ face for answers; a sinner begging for redemption from a deity that doesn’t care.

Klaus turns and runs.

-

Crouched by the side of a building, Klaus lights a cigarette that he’d found, half-smoked, on the ground. It takes a few tries, because his hands are shaking and his head is swimming, and the cigarette is a little damp. He thinks he might vomit or pass out. It’s as though he isn’t here anymore, but far away, perched somewhere and watching himself from a great height.

He’s not entirely sure that he isn’t dreaming. The dead had always stalked his sleep, more so before he’d discovered that he could medicate them away, but- God. He swallows a mouthful of bile. Not like this. Not in the day. Not for a long, long time.

Inhaling a cloud of sweet, stale smoke, he rocks back on his heels, turning his face to the sun. “Ben,” he says quietly.

“I’m here,” replies Ben, who’s stood a little way away. His cool, rippling presence is like a balm on Klaus’ frayed nerves.

After a couple of minutes, Klaus’ legs have stopped feeling like they’re about to turn to dust and his floor-cigarette has burnt almost to his fingertips. He stands tentatively, feeling his head thump in time with the beating of his heart. Though his mind has cleared somewhat, his body feels like one big, tender bruise. Ben stands like a sentry at his back.

“I’ve got to get some,” he says slowly, and he feels the words so completely that they seem to rush from his head through his body, lighting up each limb, glowing at the ends of each of his fingers and toes. Then, with a grim determination befitting of a soldier about to march into certain death, “I’m going back to the Academy.”

-

When Klaus had been eight, he’d discovered his power.

The revelation wasn’t dramatic like Ben’s (a single tentacle flopping onto the breakfast table, upsetting the milk and sending Vanya running from the room in hysterics), or vaguely comical like Luther’s (a habit of ripping stuffed toys limb from limb and a squabble resulting in a broken arm for Five) or even disastrous like Allison’s (a whisper in Klaus’ ear: _I heard a rumour that Dad built a zoo in the basement)._ It seemed that Klaus’ power was content to languish in the back of his brain while his siblings’ blossomed and developed, only to slink into the light when it felt the time was right; a horrid, loping creature that probably should have stayed hidden in the darkness forever.

For a little while, Klaus had assumed that he just didn’t have a power. Despite their age, it had been clear that he and Vanya were _other,_ never excluded, but always unconsciously pushed to the fringes of activities and conversations. He remembered when Five had first displayed his abilities – the last of them to do so, besides Klaus and Vanya – bursting in and out of the room in flashes of blue light, a miniature firework display all of his own, smug expression affixed to his face. Klaus had _ached_ for the proud, beaming smile Mom had given him, for their father’s firm hand that had laid on Five’s shoulder as he guided him towards his office to discuss his training. In that moment, all he’d wanted was to be _special_.

And so, when the voices had started, Klaus had stayed up all night to hear them whisper his name; watched the shadows dance across the walls of his room with childish fascination rather than fear. He’d trailed his fingers across the plaster, tracing the movements that were as gentle and fluid as silk waving in the wind. He’d felt powerful. His little eight-year-old heart had brimmed with excitement. When he’d told his siblings about it the next morning, Diego had told him he was dreaming, but it didn’t matter to Klaus, because _he_ knew it was real.

Even when the voices had become too much, and the shadows had manifested into shrieking spectres that followed him doggedly everywhere he went, some part of Klaus had still been relieved that at least he wasn’t _Vanya_. At least he had something that made him special, even if it was also making him crazy in the meantime.

As Klaus rounds the corner to the street he’d grown up on, the bitter realisation of how utterly fucked his life in the Academy was leaves a sour taste in the back of his throat. He feels like he’s made up of exposed wires, each part of his body periodically igniting with a different shiver or stab of pain, ready to jump out of his skin. Nerves roil in his stomach like snakes, sweat is gathering uncomfortably around the collar of his coat and his palms have begun to itch. He focuses on scratching the shapes of the letters inked there to ground him because he’s beginning to feel like a balloon about to snap its tether.

“I wonder who’s home,” Ben muses as the tall sandstone building slowly comes into view down the street. “Maybe they’ll throw you a welcome home party.”

“I’ve always wanted to go clubbing with Pogo,” says Klaus, forcing a casual joke past the nauseous lump in his throat. “I bet he’s a real animal on the dancefloor.”

Ben gives him a truly dirty look for that one. “If I wasn’t dead, I’d be strangling you right now.”

“Please. It might be relaxing.”

“Stop trying to get me to grope you,” says Ben with a shudder. “It’s like plunging your hand into a bucket of warm meat.”

“Isn’t that what we all are though?” Klaus puts on an aloof, affected voice, though his eyes are still trained on the slowly approaching building ahead. People stare as they pass him, curious eyes raking down his body, searching the empty space next to him. “When it comes down to it, isn’t the human race just a bunch of big, lumpy sacks of meat?”

“How philosophical of you,” says Ben dryly. “Have you considered writing a book?”

“It might be my only option soon.” It’s the truth. He’d long debated writing something – perhaps not on the meaning of life – but a sort of scandalous expose on the inner workings of the Academy, which in turn would lead to a lucrative book deal, a spot on the New York Times bestsellers list, an appearance on _Ellen,_ etcetera, etcetera. One evening, cross-legged on someone’s sofa and full of weed, he’d even made a start in a pad of refill paper, scratching nasty words into the page with such conviction it had nearly torn. _(Chapter One: A Mad Billionaire Kidnaps Me as an Infant and Puts Me in the Care of a Chimp)_. However, upon reinspection the next morning, the stuff that had seemed to be close to Shakespearian on the night had ended up being nothing but inane ramblings and crude drawings of dicks. He’d eventually decided it didn’t matter and tossed it out, because he wouldn’t put it past his father to sue the fuck out of him if anything ever was published.

It isn’t like the old bastard would even need the money, Klaus is reminded as they arrive at the foot of the steps of his childhood home, standing tall and proud in all of its pretentious glory. Usually, he’d avoid this part of the city so that he didn’t have to see the sun glinting off of the cast-iron railings and that cultish symbol in each of the windows. The tattoo at his wrist gives a sharp twinge. Though he knows it’s in his head, he doesn’t stop his hand from slipping up his sleeve to scratch at it.

“Okay,” he says, turning to face Ben, who is squinting up at the building doubtfully. “What’s the plan?”

Ben looks at him quizzically, then shrugs like Klaus has just asked him what flavour of ice cream he wants.

“Oh, come on, you were always the smart one! Use that big genius brain of yours.”

“I’m not here to help you get high,” he replies curtly, lips pursed. Klaus feels a sudden bolt of frustration arrow through him, curdling with the familiar, throbbing desperation for a hit, and has to take a deep breath to quash the sudden urge to cry. _I don’t want to be here,_ he thinks frantically, tearfully, _I want to be curled up somewhere, warm and so high that I can’t feel anything anymore._ His nails dig into the skin of his palms; for a moment he feels he might burst and turns his face up to the bright sky, eyes squeezed shut, mouth in a thin, taut line.

“Why are you here, then?” he manages eventually, turning to face Ben, who is regarding him coolly, arms folded. He feels childish and petulant and it colours his voice so that it comes out thin and reedy, like a child having a tantrum. “If you’re so morally opposed to everything I do, then why don’t you just _fuck off?”_

The words spill out like water in a pot left on too high. Klaus can almost hear their impact, like the thump of a fist on bare skin, before a stiff silence settles over them both.

He allows his eyes to flicker guiltily up to Ben’s face. It betrays nothing. The silence expands, rattles, echoes. He waits for him to say something, wills him to speak – to snap back, or to deliver another dry one-liner – something to reassure Klaus that, as far as he pushes, there’s still someone who’ll put up with it. But there’s nothing, except, for the second time today, that tug just below his sternum and the faint snapping sensation, and then Ben is gone.

“Fuck,” says Klaus. A passing man startles, wide-eyed, hopping out of his way like a frightened rodent.

“Fuck,” he repeats listlessly. It’s all he can think to say. The empty space where Ben had stood next to him feels cold and unnatural, like a vacuum sucking in all the warmth from the air. A hollow sense of loneliness has started to pool in Klaus’ gut, joining the aching static in his head and creeping nausea in his throat, and worst of all, he can see the Academy’s windows, deceivingly wide and bright, sparkling in the corner of his vision like a mirage. _Come home, Klaus,_ they chatter, _we’ve got nothing to hide._

A brief moment of hysteria almost overtakes Klaus, and for a second, he considers sprinting back down the street and then – well, he’d figure that out when he got there. He feels seventeen again, exhausted and frightened and rapidly running out of options, his heart thrumming in his throat like a cornered rabbit, stood in the same spot at the foot of the steps of the Academy. Only this time he’s going back in, not coming out.

The short walk up the steps takes more willpower than he’d admit. It’s as if his legs have suddenly become independent of the rest of him, all loose and uncooperative so that he has to drag them towards the shining door. He doesn’t realise that he’s started a chant of “fuck this, fuck this, fuck this” until he catches sight of his mouth moving in the reflection of the door’s glass panel, and really, that’s quite funny, the idea that his body’s just falling apart, waging war on his brain in its absolute desperation not to go back home. It’s funny until it’s not, and then Klaus is stood on the doorstep, alone, about to sacrifice his dignity for the fucking baggies of pills he’d stashed in his underwear draw when he was a teenager.

“I’ll say it once, and I’ll say it again” says Klaus, and his voice sounds faint and far away, “ _fuck_ this.”

He opens the doors.

It’s dark in the foyer, though the sun streams through the windows above the staircase, the cold marble and walnut furnishings having absorbed any trace of light or warmth in the room. Dim lamps are lit by each white pillar, but still Klaus has to take a second to blink his vision back. The smell of the place is what gets to him first – the cold scents of stone and lacquered wood and the must of antiques – so familiar that it disorientates him as he steps past the threshold, so that he has to shut his eyes and breathe in through his mouth to keep himself in place.

The doors click shut softly behind him, and when the buzzing in his ears quiets enough, he cocks his head to listen for noises. The best-case scenario here is that he somehow gets into his room, rescues the pills, steals some stuff that he can flog at a pawn shop and leaves without alerting anyone. No lecture from Luther, no cool disapproval from Daddy Hargreeves and absolutely none of the guilt and shame even catching a glimpse of Mom would bring. He listens closely: to a rookie, the house would seem deserted, but Klaus has learnt that this is deceiving, the twists and turns in the corridors and heavy wooden doors muffling important sounds that could make all the difference. He’d also learnt that becoming a junkie pretty much gives you superpowers (ha ha) – i.e. the frankly unnautural hearing he’d suddenly gained on his various missions to score, sensitive and acute enough to allow him to hear the music drifting from the direction of their bedrooms.

Klaus would be willing to bet any sum of money in the world that it’s Luther. God knows what the guy did these days, cooped up like a barnyard animal waiting to be hurried off to slaughter. He suddenly has a vivid image of Luther mowing the grass in khakis and a polo, which sends his feverish brain into hysterics and almost blows his _impeccable_ cover out of the water.

He’s sobered up by the sudden realisation that this means that he’ll have to pass Luther’s room and, ergo, Luther, to get to where he needs to be. Which means that planning and timing is key. A quick glance to the grandfather clock at his left tells him that it’s nearly two, which means that Grace will be washing up after lunch, Pogo will be in the library and his father, the unwavering soul that he is, will be in his study. For the first time in his life, Klaus feels achingly glad for the rigid structure he’d hated so much as a child.

With soft footsteps, he makes his way up the stairs, towards his bedroom. He wonders vaguely if it will be the same as he left it. Perhaps when he left, the rest of them stripped it, turned it into a yoga room or a sauna or whatever, tore down all his posters of prog rock bands and Tarantino films and threw them in the trash like so much dirt. Perhaps, he thinks, with the sickening sensation of the bottom of his stomach falling out, they bundled up his clothes and tossed them, so that the seven oxycontin and four Vicodin he’d fought so hard to get here for are instead rotting at the bottom of a landfill, still tucked into the pair of blue socks he’d left them in. The though makes fresh sweat bead at his brow and he swallows compulsively. Suddenly, viscerally, he longs for Ben’s presence, and his pace quickens as he rounds the corner to the corridor that houses their bedrooms.

Now that he’s closer, Klaus can hear the music better. As he passes Luther’s room, footsteps as light as air on the floorboards, he picks out something upbeat, jangling synths and a classically 80s melody – that hit by Men in Hats, perhaps – that you might hear at a club on retro night. For a second, he feels an acutely painful stab of pity for Luther. As big of an asshole the guy is, he’s sat in his room, listening to his records, alone in his childhood home except for a father who doesn’t care, a robot mom and a chimp, for Christ’s sake. With each day that passes, Klaus is beginning to realise that there are no winners in this family.

With the stealth of a skilled predator, he continues down the corridor, pausing at the bend to listen for approaching noises. Luther’s record continues spinning without incident, a comforting white noise behind him, masking any sounds a creaking floorboard or misplaced step might create. His pulse is rapid as he reaches his bedroom door, each breath catching in his throat, an itch at his shoulder like he’s being pursued, and when his hand closes around the cold metal of the doorknob, he takes a moment to thank whatever deity it is that’s been watching over him for the last few minutes.

Despite his earlier fears, his room is exactly how he left it. The posters are still up on the wall, Uma Thurman’s level gaze staring out at nothing, her features covered in a layer of dust. The curtains are open, so that the place feels cheerful and airy, the sun filling it to the corners, casting light across the checked bedsheets he’d chosen for himself when he was fourteen and the thin blue rug on the floorboards. His bed is made haphazardly, his nightstand cluttered with comics and crumpled pieces of paper. These things might have ignited something nostalgic in Klaus, something to make him stop and pause for a second, if his vision hadn’t tunnelled immediately on the chest of drawers on the far side of the room.

It’s as though he’s been blinkered, every other sight and sound falling into insignificance. He realises latently that he’d never even prepared what he was going to do if he actually got here, too occupied with worries of discovery, confrontation and, ultimately, failure. Add that to the list: “Believe in yourself, Klaus. You _can_ get drugs when you need to.”

He crosses the room in a few long strides, and, all fears of discovery forgotten, wrenches open the top drawer. His hand finds what he’s looking for almost immediately. Tucked in a corner, buried underneath a pair of green boxers, is the pair of socks that might just be the most important piece of clothing Klaus will ever encounter.

A memory comes to him in a flash of bright colours and raw sensations: the blue of the fabric, soft against his trembling fingers, and the pale little pills rattling about in their plastic bag; the adrenaline in his blood, all his muscles taut like an overextended spring, his breath coming short like a sprinter’s; the guilt, shame and desperation unique to a junkie, preparing for the failures of his future self. But there’s something else – muted and barely discernible, but there all the same – the tiniest spark of hope that he’d never have to come back here again, never have to feel these same things.  All of it hits Klaus full on, like a freight train. He feels he can hear his teeth rattling in his skull. He’s sat on his bed now, the dust rising around him in a cloud that catches the sunlight, clutching the bag of pills between his hands. He relaxes his grip and glances down at it. The pills are there, _one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven,_ some orange, some white, all of them made of pure gold dust, and a feeling of relief swells in Klaus’ chest like a sweeping tide.

 _I’ve done it,_ he thinks giddily, hugging the bag close to his chest like it’s about to grow wings and fly away. _I’d like to thank my agent, my hair stylist, and the Academy._

For a few moments, he’s content to just sit there, limp and boneless with relief. Simply having the pills there in his hands seems to have solved all of his problems, the comforting knowledge of their presence wrapping around him like a warm blanket. The sound of Luther’s music down the hall fades into nothing – in fact, everything does, the thrum of traffic outside and the familiar creaking of the house settling blurring into one low, serene humming.

With slow, calm movements, he rises, walks to his closet and opens the doors. He ignores the uniforms hanging in their neat rows, moving them aside on the hanger with precision and care, and bends to inspect the wooden floor. He’d stashed a pestle and mortar here when he was sixteen. It strikes him how everything he’d done seemed to have been eerily premeditated, though Klaus knows for a fact that when he was sixteen he had precisely no fucking idea about anything he was doing, ever, and that it probably just comes down to the fact that he’s an incredibly predictable person. Whatever the reason, it’s still there, cold and heavy as he removes it from underneath a stack of folded shirts. On instinct, he smells it, and the chalky scent of some teenage hit still lingers.

Muscle memory kicks in. He pours out two oxycontin into the bowl, grinds them to a powder, clears a space on his nightstand and empties the contents onto the surface; a page ripped from a book on the floor near his bed will replace a bill, and his fingers do the dividing. There’s no time for neat lines, only two uneven portions – he’s on his knees, literally, eyes level with the edge of the nightstand, deftly tearing and rolling the paper with practised movements. He’s never experienced it like this, so frantic yet so easy, hands shaking and quick. His heart hammers in his ears, but it’s fuzzy like the thumping of a bass drum, and his mouth salivates in anticipation. An overwhelming sense of _right_ washes over him, and suddenly everything becomes clear: this is where he’s meant to be. This is what he came here for, and what he’ll do for the rest of his life, chasing his next hit simply for the pleasure of kneeling down in front of it like a whore and the gleeful satisfaction of a job fucking well done.

“Jesus,” he says, a little slurred, and sits back on his heels as the sense of conviction rolls over him in a thick, immobilising wave. Then he snorts the pills and licks the residue up like a dog.

-

A couple of years ago, Klaus had fallen and hit his head at a warehouse rave outside of the city. It was fairly bad, messy enough for an ambulance-ER combo and for some girl to pass out with shock at the sight of it (though she might have just been very drunk. Klaus likes to believe the former, just because it adds dramatic value to the story.)

He doesn’t remember it happening; he can recall the periods before and after, but not the impact itself. When he’d come to, he’d been facing upwards, staring at the vaulting ceiling far above him, and he’d watched the lights flicker across the rafters in shades of green and pink. It hadn’t hurt. His body felt weightless, and he couldn’t hear anything, but something in him had soothed him, like a smooth voice in his head telling him not to panic. There was blood in his hair and running into his ear, and he could taste it in his mouth, hot and tinny, but in that moment, it was all okay. He’d felt removed, totally relaxed and wholly accepting of the new circumstances.

Of course, once they’d patched him up and sent him home with four stitches and a well-meaning warning, it’d ached for weeks, his right temple flaring with pain every few minutes until he’d press his face into his hands and cry. It had made him wonder how he’d kept so calm, felt so utterly tranquil while he should have been losing his entire shit, because, like, his _brain_ could have come out, and he could’ve died there on a grubby warehouse floor.

As he lies on his childhood bed, he decides it’s all to do with your state of mind. Despite the fact that he’s currently in a place that ranks up there with his least favourite in the world, he feels no sense of urgency to leave. The sun has turned kind and soft again, warming his legs, and with each breath he can smell a sweet, homely scent that reminds him of Mom and the feeling of security that always came with her. In fact, at some point he falls asleep as the opioids make their way around his body, leaving a trail of warm numbness in their wake. He feels like he’s on a ship that’s swaying from side to side and he doesn’t dream.

-

Ben wakes him up eventually with a well-placed hand through the abdomen. Klaus’ mouth is dry as he blinks back to consciousness and the bitter taste of the pills lingers in the back of his throat. He coughs and rubs at his eyes, briefly disorientated as his old bedroom comes slowly into focus, and hauls himself into a something like a sitting position, feet planted on the floorboards to steady him.

“Sleeping beauty awakes again,” says Ben dryly, and that _really_ throws Klaus, because this scenario is so familiar it’s like he can hear Ben’s teenage voice speaking alongside his ghost version. He frowns, scrubs his face with his hands roughly. He can’t have been asleep for long, because the sun is throwing long golden tongues of light against the wall in a way that indicates it’s nearly evening, and the itch for another hit hasn’t begun to worm its way under his skin yet.

“You gave me true love’s kiss?” Klaus is groggy, but still manages to camp it up for his brother, placing a scandalised hand on his chest and stage-gasping. “I thought I was just a lumpy sack of meat to you!”

“Yeah, you’re welcome.” Ben has the air of a martyr, which doesn’t suit him. “And you might want to shut up some, or Luther will hear you and beat your ass.”

“Oh, I hope so.”

“Well, he’s at dinner now, so you’ve got time to get out and go.”

“Maybe I _want_ to fight him. I could take him. I’d just go straight for the balls and twist, like they taught me in karate class.”

Ben raises an eyebrow. “Remember when he gave Diego that black eye? It didn’t go away for three weeks.”

“Three weeks,” repeats Klaus in a thoughtful murmur. That could work with the roguish, tortured-artist look he’d begun to adopt. A little eyeliner and he could be on the cover of Vogue. “That’s not so bad. Damaged is the new sexy, you know. Like in Fight Club.”

“Yeah,” says Ben, sounding unconvinced and, maybe, just a little disappointed. “Just like in Fight Club.”

Klaus’ hand fiddles with the little bag in his pocket nervously. A ball of emotion has formed in his chest, just below his throat, and he can’t bring himself to look Ben in the eye. It’s always like this in the time after he’s had a hit – Ben rightfully pissed off and Klaus apologetic and uselessly sincere, and the words feel recited as they form in his mouth. _I’m sorry. I’m sorry that this is the way I am, and I’m sorry that I can’t change it._

“Hey,” he settles on eventually. The unsaid words hang between them like a cold mist, and Klaus finds himself unconsciously standing and moving closer, longing for the physical contact he can’t ever have. “You wanna steal some shit and then hit Arby’s?”

For a second, it looks like Ben won’t respond. Then he smiles, a little sad, and looks Klaus square in the face, meeting and holding his gaze for a few seconds longer than is comfortable. The apology passes between them silently, like electricity across a cable, before Ben ends the moment with a confident nod of confirmation and a mischievous grin. “Let’s go.”

**Author's Note:**

> I live in the UK, so I've never been to an Arby's. It just seems like a Klaus sort of place to go from what I've heard of it.


End file.
